Happy Arbor Day!
For our namesake holiday, all of us at Arbor wanted to take a second to express our thanks to the team at Stand For Trees, our initial carbon project partner. It’s their team who oversee and help coordinate projects around the world that directly impact climate change. When you purchase the climate reversal of a tank of gas, a flight or home electrical usage through Arbor, you’re directly funding Stand For Tree’s work around the world!
We started working with their team in fall of 2020 for our initial prototype launch. We needed a flexible partner who could have significant field impact and deal with the vagaries and uncertainties of working with a startup — after all, we had no idea whether anyone would use our product when we launched! They’ve been a wonderful partner with us through this journey.
We originally identified three of their projects for our platform that we felt would provide a diverse range of options for our users:
Rimba Raya Orangutan Reserve: Who doesn’t get excited about orangutans? Orangutans + a huge carbon impact was a sure winner for us! This project in Indonesia preserves, protects and helps expand lowland forest covering over 116,000 acres. The mangrove forests in the project are some of the most efficient trees at capturing carbon on the planet. As a bonus, the project is home to more than 120 threatened and endangered species (yes, including orangutans) and provides new, environmentally friendly economic opportunities to the local community.
Amazon Valparaiso: When you want to have a huge carbon impact, it’s hard to go wrong with supporting the Amazon. This project in the Amazon basin in Brazil prevents the destruction of 16 million trees, which are projected to capture an additional 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over the next decade. The area has some of the highest density of biodiversity in the world.
Kasigau Sanctuary: For our third launch project, we wanted something different–and this opportunity to combine carbon impact with African wildlife protection was perfect! Kasigau protects a unique resource–a dryland forest between two national parks in Kenya. Projected to capture millions of additional tonnes of carbon in the coming years, it’s also a critical wildlife corridor for 11,000+ African elephants, giraffes and other threatened species.
Since our initial launch, we’re proud that our work with Stand for Trees has resulted in the removal of dozens of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. We look forward to expanding our impact and working with on other impactful projects in the future!